Obama and alt.energy

From Willis Eschenbach at Watts Up With That:

Obama By-Passes Gas
President Obama continues his Global War on Cheap Energy�, this time under the guise of avoiding �spikes� in gasoline (petrol) prices. He wants to pass gas without regrets and move post-haste to electricity and biofuels, although both are more expensive than gasoline and diesel for road and rail transport. According to the Associated Press, in a speech at the Argonne National Laboratories Obama said:

The only way to break this cycle of spiking gas prices � the only way to break that cycle for good � is to shift our cars entirely, our cars and trucks, off oil.

Let me start by saying that I�m greatly encouraged to hear that Obama has solved the problem of price variation in capitalist societies. It�s simple. Are you like me, bothered by gas prices going up and down, tired of seeing peaks and valleys in the cost of gasoline, fed up with price spikes because of e.g. unregulated speculation in commodities? The answer is obvious.

Stop using gas.

A bit more:

It�s bad news because the way he plans to get past spiking gas prices is to go to high, constant alternative fuel prices, higher than even the spikes of today. And just as he promised � no spikes. The high prices, just like the outrageous thirty-cent per kilowatt-hours electricity prices in California resulting from this same kind of backwards thinking, get locked in by long-term contracts.

No more price spikes. What�s not to like?

Unfortunately, the brilliant Obama plan is the same trademarked plan the Government always seems to have, to wit:

THROW MONEY AT THE PROBLEM�

In this case, it�s two BILLION dollars. With a B. If your family had started a business when Christ was born and made a million dollars profit per year, a huge sum of money, imagine what that could buy, you�d have been millionaires � well, after two thousand long years of running your business, stacking up a million bucks every year, year after slow year, centuries pass, finally a millennium. You�re still running the business, more years go by, dark ages and renaissance and finally, ten centuries after the first endless millennium, right about now you�d be hitting two billion in total profits.

Now imagine what that could buy. It is a huge sum of money.

Willis looks back 30 years to when the next-to-the-worst President was facing the same issues and dealing with them the same way. Carter established the Department of Energy and what has that done for us??? A longish but excellent read. Wonderful stuff...